A poetic tale of a personal medical crisis.
Memoirist, essayist and novelist Gallagher (The Sacred Meal, 2009, etc.) explores the series of events set into motion by the startling diagnosis that she suffered from a condition causing blindness.
Now in her 60s, the author has written extensively about her faith, including her attraction to Episcopal liturgy and, for a time, to the church's priesthood and the fundamental questions about the religion and its administration. Gallagher opens by explaining that her initial interest in Christianity, as an adult, stemmed from a need to fit her life into a "larger story." In the same chapter, the Californian describes how a 2009 routine doctor's visit, which she almost skipped, resulted in the discovery that her right optic nerve was dangerously inflamed and that the condition (called optic neuritis) could destroy her vision. "I dropped out of the world I lived in," she confesses. "It was like falling into Oz." What ensued was a slew of consultations with one specialist after another, during which the author received conflicting advice that included the suggestion to have her eye removed. She was eventually referred to Minnesota's Mayo Clinic. Groggy from prescribed steroids and anxious about the strain that this ordeal placed on her marriage, Gallagher began a deeply introspective journey that led to, among other shifts, a foundational change in her faith and religious outlook. In her book, the author navigates the complex American health care system, the fear and mystery surrounding her search for medical answers and healing, and her renewed appreciation for the necessity of vision: to read, to write and to view the world.
A poetic tale of a personal medical crisis.Pub Date: May 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-59298-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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